I, like a lot of people thought that if it didn’t have the copyright symbol it wasn’t copyright. Fortunately I found out I was incorrect before I got in any trouble. I believe that the fact that the copyright laws extend to the Internet is a very intelligent thing. These laws might even have to be stricter on the Internet because anyone in the world can be exposed to the work of someone else. These laws don’t only apply to written information and drawings. These laws also affect music, and videos on the Internet.
Most of us remember the problem the company “Napster” ran into in 2001. The problem stemmed from the new type of MP3 file sharing, Napster was blamed for people being able to freely share music through Napster’s services. This type of service caused music to be released through the Internet before it was even released by the artists. This was seen by most major music labels are copyright infringement. The first lawsuit filed against Napster was from Metallica; apparently, their new release at the time was released by someone else and leaked out into the Internet. Their song had been playing on several American radio stations prior to their scheduled release date. Dr. Dre soon followed with a similar lawsuit because Napster wouldn’t remove his works from their site even after written request. Madonna, which was planning on partnering up with Napster also suffered from their service when one of the singles was leaked onto the Napster network before her scheduled in 2002.
There were instances where Napster was actually thought of as an effective promotional tool. Most of the bands that believed this were small bands that weren’t signed to any major record label. These bands did not have the means to advertise on TV or radios so they depended solely of their music being transferred to the world. Unfortunately for Napster, the bands that supported them weren’t the ones that could afford the lawyers.
Napster lost the cases against the record labels because they weren’t doing enough to prevent these copyright infringements. The Distinct Court ordered Napster to monitor its customers and block any access to infringing material, since Napster was unable to do this; they shut down their site in 2001. These lawsuits eventually led Napster to file for bankruptcy. Napster agreed to pay $26 million to the copyright owners and the artists; they also agreed to pay $10 million in future licensing royalties. On June 3rd 2002 Napster finally filed for bankruptcy.
Companies have learned from Napster’s mistakes, the way they work around this possible lawsuit is by making the services now peer-to-peer file transferring. There is no longer a centralized server that stores all of the files. Although this case may seem a bit extreme, to drive a company to bankruptcy because of a few people infringing on copyright laws, think of it this way; if the artist work hard to produce the music, shouldn’t they be the first ones to share it to the world? Also, shouldn’t they get paid for their hard work?
References
Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved September 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
Sandoval, G. (n.d.). Veoh wins copyright case; YouTube wins, too? : News : Internet – ZDNet Asia. Retrieved September 17, 2009, from http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62057760,00.htm
Thomas G. Field, Jr. | Copyright on the Internet | Pierce Law. (n.d.). Retrieved September 17, 2009, from http://www.piercelaw.edu/thomasfield/ipbasics/copyright-on-the-internet.php
